Wasting of
Government Money on Useless Research Projects Adds to the Failure of Fixing Medical Errors

Since 1999, after IOM
reported on the thousands of patients dying annually from medical errors, close to $300
million in government money was allocated for research projects to find solutions.
Unfortunately, the money was given to people uninformed about the problems within
hospitals that cause medical errors. Instead of this research money being spent in local
hospitals by collecting information from those who work directly with patients, the grant
money was given to celebrity researchers ignorant of the leading causes of medical errors.
Most of the grant monies were therefore wasted.Based
on the 2002 report of Dr. Gegg Meyer of AHRQ, a government center for quality improvement
and patient safety, $5.3 million was being spent on a study using computers and
information systems to prevent medical errors. Why are we using government money to find
what has already been shown by other research projects? Medical journal are filled with
articles about the successful utilization of computerized systems to reduce medical
errors. Why do we need to spend $5.3 million researching a well-defined fact? The report
states$5.3 million would be spent to
understand the impact of working conditions on patient safety. Evidently these people do
not work in hospitals. All it takes is a day to question hospital workers about these
facts without spending millions of dollars on already established facts. Our study and
many others already proved beyond a shred of doubt that employees working under stressful
conditions resulting from staff shortage are more likely to make errors. Developing
innovative research approaches to improving patient safety would cost $8.0 million while
disseminating research results would cost $2.4 million. Nice way to waste money!

Instead of
wasting government money, why dont we put it into local hospitals working hard to
improve quality, that lack the funds to support effective intervention? Perhaps such a
hospital needs a barcode system for patient identification, costing only $200,000
depending on the size of the hospital. If 100 hospitals are selected across the nation,
two from each state, such a barcode system would cost a total of $20 million and would be
money well spent as opposed to the $80 million granted annually for research that most of
which is being wasted. Computerized barcode for patient identification systems have been
known to reduce patient identification errors since 1999. If some of the grant money had
been spent on computerized barcode systems, 400 hospitals across the nation would have
benefited by now. But, the research money is being wasted because the money was given to
those who distributed it to their friends for doing worthless research projects. So far
over $500 million grant money has gone for useless research projects instead of for fixing
medical errors.

As long as we
are unwilling to confront the real problems, we will never solve the problems of medical
errors. Solutions to medical errors will not come from pen-pushers sitting in offices and
shuffling papers, but from those who work on the process-line of patient care. These are
the ones currently being ignored. When we ask the wrong questions from the wrong people,
we get the wrong answers, which is why patients are still dying due to medical errors.